10 Sporting Events Paying Most in Prize Money
Sports in general is one of the most lucrative industry in the world both business wise and entertainments wise some of the top level athletes of different sports are millionaires and sports has kind of given them so much over the course of their careers. As sports move along money is becoming a big part of every major sports and today we are going to take a look at 10 team sports competitions (tournaments/Leagues) which has the highest prize money pool and where the winning team gets the most money.
If you follow football, in particular european football you might know that quite recently England’s division 1 (English Premier League) signed a massive domestic tv rights deal which is around $8 billion (£5.136 billion) for three years from 2016 to 2019 plus another $5billion (£3billion) is expected from foreign tv deals which makes it a grand total of $13billion (£8billion) and this money will be distributed yearly for three years to premier league clubs as equal payments. Where even if a team finish at the bottom of the league in 20th place they are likely to take home around £100 million for a season while the champions will get around £150 to £160 depending on various bonuses. So if we take other european leagues into account these are the highest paying competitions in the world with massive prize money pool. But we are going to exclude the leagues and only focus on competitions/Tournaments which.
| NO# | EVENT | SPORT | TOTAL PRIZE MONEY POOL | WINNERS |
| 1 | UEFA Champions League | Football | Varies (2016 total was $1.3 billion) | Varies (2016 winners Real Madrid got $75 million) |
| 2 | Formula 1 | MotorSport | $797.5m | Varies (2015 winners Mercedez got $98.97m) |
| 3 | FIFA World Cup | Football | $576m | $35m |
| 4 | European Championship | Football | $245m | $29M |
| 5 | World Series (MLB) | Baseball | Varies (2014 total pool was $66.5m) | 36% of total prize money pool (2014 winners got $22.5m) |
| 6 | UEFA Europa League | Football | Varies (2014 total pool was $237m) | Varies (2014 winners got Sevilla got $16.4m) |
| 7 | Super Bowl | NFL | $11M | |
| 8 | FedEx Cup | Golf | $35m | $10m |
| 9 | World Series Poker | Pokar | $62m | $10m |
| 10 | Wimbledon | Tennis | $45m | $3.9m |
| 11 | US OPEN | Tennis | $47m | $4m |
| 12 | Dubai World Cup | Horse Racing | $10m | |
| 13 | FIFA Club World Cup | $28m | $7m |
These were the big competitions which gets massive prize money to teams or players involved, in Tennis their is huge prize money as well specially the four major grand slams (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open) always increase the total prize money pool every year.
Currently Wimbledon is the highest paying tennis tournament where $42.2m is awarded among players and the winners of singles (men and women) categories taking home around $2.4 million each. While prize money is distributed according to how far a players finishes. First round losers in singles competition get around $37,000.
I like to compete for cash
One glaring omission: The English Premier League. It is at #1 with a pot of £5.4 billion and the winners get £150 million. In fact the team in last place gets £100 million and would still be at the top of the list.
Where is The international Esport event? 🙂 23+ milion dollars and its only 5 guys.